Guilty Pleasure
by xXsweetmusicXx
Summary: -Minutemen- A pen pal program with a rival school does NOT a happy Zeke Thompson make - or does it? Mushy couples, secret meetings, and the letter that started everything. Zeke/OC, set after the movie's end.
1. Are You Gay?

Contrary to the belief of the school body (save Virgil and Charlie), Zeke Thompson really wasn't a hateful person. Sure, he would beat up the occasional douche that threatened his friends or give the odd teacher his "Back-The-Fuck-Off" glare when approached about a missing homework assignment, but that didn't mean he hated everyone and everything. In fact, you would be hard-pressed to find even one thing he truly loathed with all of his heart and soul - unless you ever ran into him on Valentine's Day.

As cliché as it may seem, Zeke could not stand that one day of the year. All of the gooey couple stuff flying around made him sick to his stomach. What higher being decided that it was a good idea to designate one day of the year for people to pretend that they were absolutely besotted with their significant other? And really, why did teachers think that it was a good idea to assign PROJECTS that day? And they weren't just regular projects, either. No, they had to be about FRIENDSHIP and LOVE and...

It was enough to make him gag. And now, because Virgil HAD to start dating that Stephanie girl, he had to witness all of this, not from afar, but up close and personal. All of the "Awww-you-look-adorable's" and "Oh-you-shouldn't-have's" and the stupid presents that were supposed to be symbolic or some shit like that. He was not going to sit around watching this.

No way in HELL. He valued his sanity too much.

And that was why, during lunch, he grabbed his things and abruptly got up from the table.

"Zeke, man, where are you going?" Virgil was, of course, addressing his taller friend, but his eyes never strayed far from the blonde bombshell in his arms smiling up at him. Zeke, of course, noticed and felt his lip curl into a sneer.

"Going to class," he grunted, heaving his bag onto his shoulder and inadvertently knocking Charlie in the back of the head with it. The 14 year old shot a glare at Zeke, which withered almost instantly under the intense look he was receiving. Grabbing his backpack quickly, he scrambled up and after the tall senior. Zeke was well aware that the small boy had to run to keep up with him, but he couldn't care less. All he cared about was getting away from Virgil and his girl.

"Zeke, wait! Come on, slow down!" Charlie called after him, racing to catch up. Finally, Zeke paused and allowed him to reach him.

"W-what's going on?" Charlie gasped, clutching at the stitch in his side. Zeke rolled his eyes.

"I couldn't stand watching Romeo anymore," he jerked his thumb backwards at the cafeteria as another couple came out, holding hands and gazing into each other's eyes, occasionally smiling and leaning in for a kiss.

"God, that is disgusting," Zeke scoffed as the two lovebirds passed them, still looking at each other and consequently almost running into him.

"Couldn't you be a BIT more tolerant, Zeke?" Charlie looked up at him, exasperated. He had heard all of this before and was, quite frankly, getting a bit sick of it.

"I mean, it's Valentine's Day."

"Christ, Charlie! Just because it's Valentine's Day doesn't mean squat to me, alright?!" he snapped, causing Charlie to jump back in shock. Seeing the look on his face made Zeke pause and try to control his anger.

"Look," he sighed, running his fingers through his hair.

"This whole Valentine's Day is a crock, alright? It's...it's just..." he floundered around, looking for just the right word to describe his contempt for the supposed holiday. He began to get flustered and he felt his anger return, his face burning. Biting his tongue, he turned away from Charlie and stalked off to his English class, leaving Charlie wondering what in the world was going on with his friend.

If Zeke had expected any relief from the day's nonsense in this class, he was sorely mistaken. The teacher, like half of his other teachers that day, had thrown together some stupid project. And of course, it couldn't just be any project. No, it had to be about MAKING FRIENDSHIPS.

But this teacher had gone too far. Mr. Johnson had set up a pen pal program with another school. And it wasn't just any school, nooooo. It was with Summerton High's rival school.

The class was in an uproar. How could he do this to them? And on VALENTINE'S DAY, no less! Almost instantly, most people decided that they would refuse to do the project. Rebel against the madness! This was an outrage!

And then, the teacher dropped the bomb: this project would mean the difference between a pass and a fail.

"Of course," he continued with an almost evil-looking smile on his face. "You will not have to write the first letter."

He held up a large envelope and proceeded to pull letters out of it, calling up the recipients. Grumbling, everyone got their letters and returned to their seats, ripping open their envelopes and scanning the letters.

"And finally, Zeke Thompson," the teacher waved the last letter in his direction. Shooting him a fierce glare, Zeke shuffled up to the desk and snatched up the letter before making his way back to his seat. The class had gone silent, save for the scratches of pencils as people scrawled out their replies. As he finally took the chance to examine his envelope, he noticed that the handwriting on the front was excruciatingly neat. Had he seriously been stuck with a popular? Groaning quietly, he ripped open the envelope and took out the letter.

_Hello, Zeke! _it began.

_I suppose this may be slightly awkward for you, if only for the fact that I know your name and yet you had no clue I existed until you received this letter._ _To remedy this fact, I shall tell you my name now. It's Julie._

_We were told to ask our "pen pal" questions, and so my first and possibly only question to you is: Are You Gay?_

Zeke paused for a moment, rereading the question. Had she actually written that? He blinked and continued reading in hopes of some explanation. He didn't have to read much farther.

_The reason I asked you this is simple. My older brother (an idiot, but I love him anyways) found out about the letter assignment, although I tried my hardest to keep it a secret from him. _

_Anyways, he thinks that, as we exchange letters, we will form a tight-knit camaraderie, which will then blossom into a sweet innocent love, and we will thus ride off into the sunset on either a horse or some kind of motorcycle - I suppose it depends on what sort of Prince Charming you are._

_As I doubt that that explained my question sufficiently enough, I will spell it out for you, plain and simply: if you are gay, then this Prince Charming "fantasy" will not occur, thus making my brother wrong. Although I can assure you I really have nothing against homosexuality. It's just that then the fantasy would be rendered useless. _

_As I sit here at my desk, writing this letter, a thought has occurred to me: are we ever to find out what we both look like? I mean, obviously I have a picture of you in my head, but I want to know if it is accurate. Do you have a picture of what you think I look like? I would love to hear it. My picture of you is really quite simple. I think that you are tall and slightly scary-looking. Possibly brunet? Dark brown eyes are definitely a given, I suppose. A muscular build, I think, would look best. _

_It would be much appreciated for you to tell me just how accurate I was. Apparently, I have somewhat of a knack for guessing others appearances. It's been described as "spooky" before!_

_Alas, class time is up and I must stuff this letter into an envelope. Best regards!_

_Yours,_

_Julie _

And THIS was his pen pal?

Maybe some girls weren't as boring as he had thought.

A/N: Um...Merry Christmas?

I'm not too crazy about the ending, but it'll work. Zeke's response will be in the next chapter!

Reviews and constructive criticism are definitely welcome!


	2. Fabulous Advice For Zeke

As far as he was concerned, Zeke had never hated his English teacher more than he did at that second. As he lay on his bed, a notebook perched on his stretched legs, he had to fight the urge to hit something - or some ONE - while he attempted to write his letter to his new "pen-pal". Try as he might, he could not think of one single thing to write to her, except to tell her that no, he was not gay. And, truth be told, he was sorely tempted to say that he WAS gay, just so that her brother's stupid little fantasy would have zero chance of happening.

Unfortunately, he could not deny that this girl had piqued his curiosity. For one thing, it seemed that she actually had a strange knack for guessing the appearance of others, and that was just cool. And second, she seemed to have somewhat of a personality - no matter how odd it was.

Groaning loudly, he dropped his head against the wall behind his bed, attempting to beat a couple ideas into his mind. After trying this several times, however, the only thing he could concentrate on was the pounding in his head, which was not helping to boost his creativity. Deciding that this was, in fact, not the best thing to do, he slowly got up off of his bed and sauntered over to his desk, grabbing his phone and punching in Virgil's number. If ANYONE could help him with this, it would be Lover-Boy, seeing as he was always going on and on about his AMAZING advice on the fairer gender. As the phone rang, he sat back down on his bed, casually noticing how he was crushing his English notebook and how, if he really thought about it, he really didn't give two shits because Virgil WASN'T PICKING UP HIS DAMN PHONE, and if he didn't hurry up, Zeke would get on his motorcycle, ride over there, and beat that boy's scrawny little-

"Hello?" Virgil's voice cut through Zeke's little daydream like a knife, startling him just enough to fall off of his bed with a rather loud 'thump' as the phone flew from his hand.

As he quickly scrambled to his feet, mumbling a few choice curses as he knocked his notebook to the ground, he grabbed the phone and nearly shouted, "Virgil, why the hell did you take so long to answer your damn phone?!"

"Um, I was kind of busy doing homework," Virgil responded, sounding more than a bit confused.

"What's your problem?"

"I…uh…" Zeke paused. How was he going to approach this situation delicately? He rarely asked for advice concerning girls. If he said this wrong, Virgil would no doubt get the wrong idea and decide that he - Virgil Fox - had LEVERAGE against Zeke. This was to be taken quite seriously.

"How do you talk to girls?"

Well, THAT certainly went according to plan. As he sat there for a moment, holding the phone away from his ear while listening to Virgil die laughing, he could feel his face heat up as his temper began to flare.

"Virgil, just shut up for two seconds and let me talk!" he barked in the general direction of the apparatus in his hand. The laughter on the other end began to quiet, and soon it was silent.

"Done yet?" Zeke was attempting to remain calm, but he knew that if Virgil so much as chuckled again, he wouldn't be responsible for his actions.

"Yeah. Sorry about that, dude. It's just… you…asking how to talk to girls…" Zeke could clearly hear Virgil attempting to hold back another bout of laughter and he grit his teeth.

"If you mention that tomorrow, I will personally beat you to death with a wrench. Now LISTEN," he hissed, sounding quite deadly, through clenched teeth. His threat was met with dead silence, which he took as a sign to continue.

"Okay, so you know how Mr. Johnson made that stupid assignment where we had to, like, have a pen pal? Well, I got his girl named Julie, an' she asked-"

He paused, wondering how to word this next part and why he had decided to call Virgil instead of Charlie. At least Charlie would've been sympathetic…

Sighing, he decided to just be blunt.

"Well, she asked if I was gay, and that's just…thrown me off? Yeah, I guess that's the right way to say it. An' now I just…don't know how to respond and I swear to God, Virge, if you even MENTION this to anyone at school, even if you don't say any names, I will run you over on my bike and then put you in a cheerleading outfit and-"

"Okay, okay, I get the point," Virgil hastily cut him off and Zeke smirked. He knew that bringing up "The Incident" was a low blow, even though Virgil tried to act like it didn't bother him anymore.

"I guess talk about…stuff? Maybe say how you like bikes and shit like that, you know? Oh, man," Virgil suddenly sounded panicked.

"Listen, dude, I gotta go. Stephanie is coming in like…five minutes and I have to get ready. Call me later!"

And the line went dead. Zeke stared at the phone in his hand, his jaw almost sitting on his chest. THIS was the fantastic advice that Virgil kept saying he was capable of giving?

He was going to Charlie next time.

Sighing, he grabbed his notebook and threw himself backwards onto his bed, tossing his phone carelessly onto the floor. He was going to break that thing someday…

Shaking his head, he opened his notebook once more and, pausing only briefly, began to write.

_What up, Julie, _he started.

_I'm Zeke, which you already know. _

_I guess I should answer your question. No, I'm not gay, but I don't think that your brother's little "fantasy" is ever going to happen. But if it ever DOES happen, be ready to shove a motorcycle helmet onto your head. No damn pony's gonna take ME anywhere._

_Anyways, I read your letter and that description of me was pretty good. The only thing you got wrong was my eyes. I have blue eyes, not brown. Just, you know, so you know._

_I guess it's only fair that I ask you a couple questions now. I want to know what you look like, so if you could send a description or something, that would be awesome._

_And I guess, are you a senior? 'Cause I am._

_-Zeke_

__He looked at the letter he had just scrawled and sighed. It would have to do, he supposed. At least he wouldn't get a failing grade.

Getting up, he loped down the stairs and into the dining room, searching around for some type of envelope. He wanted to find one quickly, before his uncle came back and saw-

"Whatcha got there, Zekey-Boy?!"

Damn.

"It's just a letter to my school pen pal. She wrote me a letter and I have to reply," he said stiffly, finally finding and envelope and shoving said letter inside before his uncle could ask anymore questions.

"Ah! So it's to a GIRL, huh?" his uncle raised his eyebrows a bit suggestively before letting out a hearty laugh and slapping Zeke on the back.

"Go easy on the lil' lady, alright tiger? Don't want her falling all over you too fast! And, uh…"

He leaned in towards Zeke, motioning for him to come closer.

"If you ever get to 'the deed', don't forget to use protection, 'cause I don't want no little Zeke's running around. Got it?"

"Aw, c'mon!" Zeke's face was bright red as he quickly backed away from his uncle, who was having a hearty laugh at his mortified nephew.

"I'm just kidding! Go on, go back to whatever it is you do up in that black hole of a room," he cried, shooing Zeke back up the stairs, who was all too happy to go. Finally getting up to his room, he snatched up his backpack and unzipped it.

"You are way more trouble than you're worth," he grumbled to the letter before shoving it into his backpack and flopping back down onto his bed, hoping to erase all memories of the previous conversation.

A/N: What is this?! An UPDATE? Oh golly gee!

I had a lot of fun writing Zeke in this chapter. I hope he isn't too OOC, but if he is, please feel free to tell me.

In a review.

Review plzthnx?


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